Apple announced this morning that they've sold "more than" ten million (that's 10,000,000 for those who don't share the American names for large numbers) song through the iTunes Music Store. By my count, 19 weeks have passed since April 28, 2003, so that's a little over 526,315 per week on average. Not bad for such a tiny segment of the market. I wonder how well the Windows version will do? Presumably the high purchase rate of Mac users won't be replicated, but it wouldn't take much of a percentage of Windows purchasers to drown out the Mac contingent in a hurry!
Oh yeah, there were some other things, like a bigger iPod. 40 gigabytes (roughly 10,000 songs by Apple's measurements) for $500.
And my 800MHz iMac seems slower today my comparison to the 1.25GHz model with USB 2.0. That I don't have any use for USB 2.0 just doesn't matter right now. <sniff>
Updated: So if they sold a million the first week, and it took 18 more weeks to sell nine more millions, are things getting progressively worse?
(Click on the chart for a larger image.)
No, it would appear that there was a huge bubble up front, settling down over the next couple of months to the point that now the question of whether they sold that ten millionth track yesterday or today actually makes a different about whether they're averaging fewer or more sales per day than a month ago.
For the record, if today, then they are averaging 76,938 sales per day, a few less than 77,381 per day on July 22. If yesterday, then they are averaging 77,519, a few more. I think it is safe to say that the average is running more than 75,000 tracks sold per day.
Also, in case anybody was concerned that the average might be skewed by the performance of the first couple of weeks, I added a 'Daily 2' line which measures the average only since the last data point, and according to those figures, daily sales are actually improving.
Updated Again: Updated the chart, above, to reflect the more accurate sale date for the ten millionth track, September 3. See comment #2 for details.
Article comments
1 - TDavid
Anybody have a more definitive date on windows launch than what was in the article?
2 - Phillip Winn
More new info: According to this article, the 10 millionth song was actually sold on September 3, which makes all of the numbers above slightly pessimistic. I wish I had such precise information on any of the other milestones!
3 - Phillip Winn
It should also be noted that the number of people running Mac OS X (the only version capable of handling the iTMS) is estimated to be seven million. So seven million potential customers have bought ten million songs in 128.5 days.